October 25, 2013

Meeting Flossie Williams on the Empire Line [by Daniel Nester]

There’s always the anxiety that the line to Albany is not the line to Albany.

I’m standing in Penn Station near Gate 6, waiting, I hope, for the Empire Service to
board. A woman with mid-length blonde hair and a cotton Nehru-style jacket stands
ahead of me. I ask if the line is the line for Albany and she says yes.

We talk
about trains, then why we’re here. She’s a singer, she tells me. Opera and
theatre. Teaches part-time at one of the colleges in Albany, not mine. I tell her I’m a
writer, professor. Almost in passing, the singer mentions her current project: an
opera about a poet.

Oh, I say. Which one?

William Carlos Williams?

She answers in the form of a question, as if I might not
know who the name.

William Carlos Williams!
I say back. He’s my favorite all-time poet!

It feels odd saying that; I mean, normally one would say “all-time
favorite” when referring to a baseball player or movie. But a poet?

Anyway, hearing more about the Williams opera has to wait. It is
confirmed that the line for Albany is in fact the line for Albany, and the
crowd is moved uniformly toward the escalator.

We sit across the aisle, the train half-empty. The singer’s
name is Kara Cornell (pictured above), and she lives
upstate, a few towns over from me. In the Williams opera, she plays Flossie, the doctor's wife. A baritone-co-star plays
Dr. Williams, two girls play the Williams sons as boys. Another couple plays art patrons whose name escapes me. And Ezra Pound. A singing Ez!

As way make our way past Yonkers, Cornell lets me look at the
score. It’s a full-on opera, The News from Poems,
written and composed by Susan Kander. I’d written a libretto once years
ago, and I want to say Kander’s name sorta rings a bell. Initially a six-song
cycle (“The Red Wheelbarrow,” “This is Just to Say” among them), Kander has expanded
the work into a full-fledged opera.

Cornell loves her character. “It’s fun because she gets more drunk as the opera goes on,”
she says. One scene takes place in Paris, where the Williams family
lived from 1928 to 1929. She sings a Flossie snippet in clear mezzo-soprano.

“I love Paree, I love Paree!”

Even whisper-sung, Cornell’s voice fills our part of the
train. No one seems to mind.

We have one Facebook friend in common, WAMC’s Joe Donahue,
host of The Roundtable. I tell her about The Summer King, an opera
composed by my old friend Daniel Sonenberg, about Negro League home run king
Josh Gibson, for which I co-wrote the libretto.

I am always moved uniformly by a spirit of my uselessness on
the train. Flossie-Kara and I check email on our devices. I’d cancelled classes
today because I’d be travelling; students have been emailing me all day, anxious
about the rather simple directions I gave them for their take-home assignments.
I resolve to ignore them until I get home.

I drink the rest of my coffee, now
cold, I bought in the train station, and read about Meg Ryan’s new private life
in New York on the cover of People magazine. The leaves outside turn a deeper
and deeper orange as we head further north.

Comments

Meeting Flossie Williams on the Empire Line [by Daniel Nester]

There’s always the anxiety that the line to Albany is not the line to Albany.

I’m standing in Penn Station near Gate 6, waiting, I hope, for the Empire Service to
board. A woman with mid-length blonde hair and a cotton Nehru-style jacket stands
ahead of me. I ask if the line is the line for Albany and she says yes.

We talk
about trains, then why we’re here. She’s a singer, she tells me. Opera and
theatre. Teaches part-time at one of the colleges in Albany, not mine. I tell her I’m a
writer, professor. Almost in passing, the singer mentions her current project: an
opera about a poet.

Oh, I say. Which one?

William Carlos Williams?

She answers in the form of a question, as if I might not
know who the name.

William Carlos Williams!
I say back. He’s my favorite all-time poet!

It feels odd saying that; I mean, normally one would say “all-time
favorite” when referring to a baseball player or movie. But a poet?

Anyway, hearing more about the Williams opera has to wait. It is
confirmed that the line for Albany is in fact the line for Albany, and the
crowd is moved uniformly toward the escalator.

We sit across the aisle, the train half-empty. The singer’s
name is Kara Cornell (pictured above), and she lives
upstate, a few towns over from me. In the Williams opera, she plays Flossie, the doctor's wife. A baritone-co-star plays
Dr. Williams, two girls play the Williams sons as boys. Another couple plays art patrons whose name escapes me. And Ezra Pound. A singing Ez!

As way make our way past Yonkers, Cornell lets me look at the
score. It’s a full-on opera, The News from Poems,
written and composed by Susan Kander. I’d written a libretto once years
ago, and I want to say Kander’s name sorta rings a bell. Initially a six-song
cycle (“The Red Wheelbarrow,” “This is Just to Say” among them), Kander has expanded
the work into a full-fledged opera.

Cornell loves her character. “It’s fun because she gets more drunk as the opera goes on,”
she says. One scene takes place in Paris, where the Williams family
lived from 1928 to 1929. She sings a Flossie snippet in clear mezzo-soprano.

“I love Paree, I love Paree!”

Even whisper-sung, Cornell’s voice fills our part of the
train. No one seems to mind.

We have one Facebook friend in common, WAMC’s Joe Donahue,
host of The Roundtable. I tell her about The Summer King, an opera
composed by my old friend Daniel Sonenberg, about Negro League home run king
Josh Gibson, for which I co-wrote the libretto.

I am always moved uniformly by a spirit of my uselessness on
the train. Flossie-Kara and I check email on our devices. I’d cancelled classes
today because I’d be travelling; students have been emailing me all day, anxious
about the rather simple directions I gave them for their take-home assignments.
I resolve to ignore them until I get home.

I drink the rest of my coffee, now
cold, I bought in the train station, and read about Meg Ryan’s new private life
in New York on the cover of People magazine. The leaves outside turn a deeper
and deeper orange as we head further north.